ShortStop 2014

[Frayed Knot]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: What do we think of Nimmo instead of Flores?

I think the current consensus is that Nimmo has the higher ceiling but also lower floor. IOW, being further away from the majors Nimmo could still whiff on a big league career entirely, but also has the more rounded tool set that makes his potential upside better than Flores who's limited by his glove & speed and is at an age where he's what you see now is closer to what you're going to get.

How one wants to view those differences for trade purposes depends on the particular needs and wants of both the trading and receiving teams. I suspect that if the Mets had a specific trade on the hook right now and that to complete it they were given the choice of including either Flores & Nimmo that they'd opt to deal Flores and keep Nimmo, but that's purely a guess on my part.

[Edgy MD]

I ain't doin' no three-for-one for no Strudel or Astrodoodle or whatever his name is. Any one of those three guys can easily end up giving his team plenty more WARPs and VORPS and totAVGs than this guy in his one guaranteed year.

One of those guys for Asperger. Two of those guys for Asperger-plus-a-contract-extension. Even then, it's almost too painful to contemplate.

Seriously, when you start putting out three players for one, and all three are capable and enchanting major league-starter level talents, then I want it to be a guy who makes you stand right up and say, "Hey, we really are the favorite in this division now and everybody knows it."

Let's not get so hungry for other team's players that we start kidding ousrelves that Dick Schofield is Cal Ripken. Columnists love to sow that grass-is-greener bullshit. If it doesn't solve the problem (and it doesn't), don't go bending over backwards for a non-solution.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: What do we think of Nimmo instead of Flores?

Just watched the replay of today's game and can report Nimmo is a big, solid, athletic, strong, baseball-smashing guy. Not trading him.

Nimmo is zimmo!

[Edgy MD]

Yeah. When a guy's main problem is that he's almost too selective, I can work with that.

What's that? An athletic Nick Johnson with two healthy legs? I can certainly work with that.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Srlsly, I was almost shocked by what a specimen he;d become. Don't take this comparison too literally but a body like a lefthanded hitting Hunter Pence. Tall and taut.

[Vic Sage]

all three are capable and enchanting major league-starter level talents,

"enchanting"? really? that's not a word scouts use much, i bet.
Oddly, despite the lack of enchantment one is likely privvy to in baseball circles, i think "disenchantment" runs rampant.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Unless you're talking bare-competence-level capability, Edge, "capable" is debatable. "Enchanting?" Come on, man.

When you're starting Johnnie LeMaster, and you can get Dickie Thon for a price below Ripken, you'll take Dickie Thon.

[ashie62]

As it stands I would make the phone call and sign up Stephen Drew.

It is possibly the overall cheapest option out there and allows the Mets to not have to count on Tejada Qball or any internal experiments....

[Zvon]

With Tejada doing that workout thing in MGIM's backyard I wanted to wait and see him a bit before passing judgement.
He supposed to be in better shape. Already hurt himself.
I figure at least he will catch the ball. One (actually 2, 1 not called) errors yesterday.

Unless I see a drastic turnaround in the next 72 hours, I'm done with him. Lets see if Flores can play SS w/o dragging his feet too much.

[Edgy MD]

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: Unless you're talking bare-competence-level capability, Edge, "capable" is debatable. "Enchanting?" Come on, man. When you're starting Johnnie LeMaster, and you can get Dickie Thon for a price below Ripken, you'll take Dickie Thon.

Actually, I meant Dick Schofield, and subsequently changed it.

But sure, I'll take either, but I ain't giving up no three major-league-starter level talents for a year of either, whether or not you're feeling the enchantment.

[Frayed Knot]

John Harper: Mets still monitoring SS market - although he talks more about them keeping an eye on possible shakeouts in Seattle [Miller vs Franklin] and/or Arizona [Owings vs Gregorius] than about Drew who still seems to want what the Mets won't give and vice versa.

[Vic Sage]

i'd sooner take the loser of the Owings / Gregorious competition than one of the Seattle guys, but I'm not sure if i'd trade Plawecki + Montero to get one of them. Maybe if they included a decent OF prospect back i'd be ok with it. Frankly, Gregorious seems to be the kind of SS that the Mets thought Tejada was, which doesn't excite me. Owings may have a stronger bat, but his reported lack of plate discipline is indeed worrisome. I've come to think that our best bet is to give Flores more ABs at SS until he proves he CAN'T play the position, and then play Seratelli if he can't.

[Benjamin Grimm]

I'd hate to give up on Plawecki just yet. Travis is still too much of a question mark.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

I think we get a SS for less than Plawecki/Montero, if that's what's really under discussion.

Tejada/Nieuwenhuis/Gee is what I'm thinking

[bmfc1]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I'd hate to give up on Plawecki just yet. Travis is still too much of a question mark.

Agreed. There are no guarantees so keep them both, at least for now.

[Vic Sage]

it's not a question of "giving up"; it's about filling a hole. You have to give something to get something. We have a hole at SS that runs deep down into the organization. With d'Arnaud, we have at least the potential of an answer for our catching situation at the ML level, and AZ is demanding a young catcher for a SS, it seems.

Of course it all depends on your relative assessments of Plawecki vs Owings / Gregorious. If you don't think they have similarly productive upsides, and that they are similarly close to the majors, then don't do the deal. I think Owings has a chance to be as good a ML SS as Plawecki has of being a good ML catcher, and i think he's closer to the majors. That's why Plawecki alone won't get it done. Whether Montero is the other piece (to make up that difference), or a lesser prospect like DeGrom would be acceptable, or whether we give Montero and they give us something else back... these are all negotiating points after you make the initial assessment of relative value. I'm not sold either way yet, but its intriguing to consider.

Tejada / Niehuwenhuis / Gee? I don't think that gets us more than a souvenir cap and maybe a hot dog.

But you really don't need to consider the value of that package, since AZ wants a catcher. Maybe Seattle would take Gee+something for one of their castoffs, but i don't think they are much better than what we have. Or maybe a 3rd team can be brought in to an AZ deal for that package. Yeah, i'm not looking to lose Montero+Plawecki either, but we need a SS... and not just a guy who can stand between David Wright and the second base bag, but a guy who can be so above average at the position that we don't consider it a weakness anymore. I don't know if any of these prospects fit that bill, but if our scouts do, then giving up talent to get it shouldn't dissuade us from doing so.

[Edgy MD]

I'm not advocating this trade, but it wouldn't necessarily indicate a give-up, yeah.

If you have two assets in a one department and zero in another, it may come to pass that you decide that the second asset in the first department is a luxury you can't afford to retain while the second department is bleeding the company dry.

[Benjamin Grimm]

My point is that the Mets are not at the point where Plawecki is a luxury. We need to see more from d'Arnaud before that happens.

That doesn't mean you don't trade him in the right deal, just that there's more reason to hesitate.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

eh. I just get the impression that if the Mets were willing to trade their top prospects they'd be gone already. Ike Davis is my deal too, somehow. Other guys who could go:

Black
den dekker
deGrom
Fulmer
Muffy?
Flores
Doodoo
Young Jr.
Recker
Satin
Lagares

Everyone is quick to shout "bag of balls!" and forgets that Sandy unloaded both Thole and Nickeas in a trade for something useful. I'm not saying they shouldn't trade Plawecki (or even dArnaud if the return is zexy enough) just that, I think we may not hafta.

[Edgy MD]

I got a nice workbench from Black den Dekker.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Of course, when he traded Thole and Nickeas he also threw in the reigning Cy Young Award winner.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Sure but the point is had anyone raised the possibility of those two in any deal they'd have sure drawn a w"we'd be lucky if they bring us a half-eaten hot dog lolrofl!!11" response.

[Ceetar]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Sure but the point is had anyone raised the possibility of those two in any deal they'd have sure drawn a w"we'd be lucky if they bring us a half-eaten hot dog lolrofl!!11" response.

Little bit of special situation there given the knuckleball-catcher pairing, but mostly crappy guys get thrown into package deals all the time. "Need someone to stand in LF for a couple of weeks" "need someone to fill out a AAA rotation cause we're promoting some guys and don't want to rush the AA guys yet"

It's somewhat amazing how often major league organizations simply need bodies.

[Edgy MD]

Perhaps an even better example is that the team got two guys with gen-u-ine futures for Buck and Byrdie after the waiver deadline.

Sandy seems to have demonstrated that he knows when to hold 'em, and "bag o' balls" rhetoric only hurts your team.

[Vic Sage]

Deals aren't built around those kinds of players. It's Dickey+body+body, not Nickeas+Thole +CY winner.

In the Gee package that was suggested, it's Gee + UT/SS + LHed OF1/b. Nobody is going to credit us much for Nieuenhuis or Tejada in a package, beyond the fact that they are living creatures with enough skill and youth to stand in certain places on a baseball field and play roles on a roster. Which is certainly not "nothing", but it's also not very much. So you have to decide what Gee is worth to other teams, and to us, as an adequate inning-eating #3-4 type starter. And while that's quite a bit MORE than nothing, and is really quite useful, its also not the stuff that dreams are made of, and if you have a blue-chip prospect with a future that could include all-star games, Gee is not the big fish you want to land in return.

Marlon Byrd was having the best year of his career when Sandy traded him; he was not a "bag-o-balls" type of player at that point (even with less leverage after the trade deadline), so i don't see how that is relevant. And our rhetoric on the subject doesn't hurt the team... or help it, for that matter. It's utterly irrelevant to anyone but us.

[Edgy MD]

Vic Sage wrote: Marlon Byrd was having the best year of his career when Sandy traded him; he was not a "bag-o-balls" type of player at that point (even with less leverage after the trade deadline), so i don't see how that is relevant. And our rhetoric on the subject doesn't hurt the team... or help it, for that matter. It's utterly irrelevant to anyone but us.

Because the popular rhetoric at the time was that by holding out for players that they assessed to have actual value --- instead of trading his short-timers for anything he could get --- that he would walk away with nothing as he did with regard to Scott Hairston the previous year.

[Vic Sage]

i could well be misremembering, but i seem to recall the rhetoric around here being of the nature that Sandy should move Byrd before the deadline, since he'd have more leverage (which he would have had) at that point. And for all we know, Sandy could well have passed on a decent offer waiting for a better one, before finally ending up with the Bucs prospects. We're just looking at the outcome after the fact and saying "yea, Sandy!". And yea indeed (though Black could easily end up Kyle Farnsworth and tiny Dilson Herrera could get blown away by a stiff breeze and never get a sniff of Queens). But only Sandy knows whether he got the maximum value by doing it that way. Unlike Hairston, Byrd was having not just a good year but a great year and Sandy may have figured he had the luxury of waiting because he felt he could ultimately get SOMETHING for Byrd going down the stretch. As it turned out, there was an organization that finally was in a pennant race after not being in the post-season for 20 years, and so was willing to risk overpaying for the short-term gain. And it worked out for the Bucs, as the move helped get them into the post-season. But it could just as easily have gone the other way, just like it did with Hairston, and we could've ended up with nothing, not even a bag-o-balls. That it worked out well the second time (and not the first) didn't make it the right strategy either time.

But as i said, i could be misremembering the nature of the rhetoric at that time. In any event, it still doesn't explain to me how the content of our rhetoric, good or bad, hurts our team. You think Sandy is monitoring online bulletin boards and blogs (or even the national media) in order to decide what moves to make? His understanding of the "popular opinions" of the fanbase may not go entirely unconsidered (certainly by ownership), but I don't think it impacts his moves one way or another. Now if you're talking about the public abuse heaped on overpaid, underperforming players at the ballpar, the kind that eventually rises to the level of metaphorical burnings in the public square, then maybe a GM will try to move such a fellow for his own good and to get rid of the distraction. Under those circumstances, a trade or buyout is addition by subtraction and a "bag o balls" is just a bonus. Also, when your dealing with an impending FA, particularly one with no vested history with the team, and your team is out of the running, its just a waste of resources to get nothing for him (as with Hairston) than it is to accept less than perceived "value". In such situations, waiting for "actual value" that may not materialize can do more harm to the franchise than good.

[Edgy MD]

That's 30 pounds of words leading up to "In such situations, waiting for "actual value" that may not materialize can do more harm to the franchise than good."

This is incorrect. This is bag-of-balls thinking.

[Vic Sage]

well if you say so, then it must be so.

[Ceetar]

There's also the idea that standing firm on Hairston, and being willing to take nothing helped land the haul they ultimately got for Byrd. Sandy had history on his side when he said "This is my final offer. take it or leave it." and the other teams would believe that he wouldn't take less than that. This is the price, and you'll pay it or you don't get him. Whereas if they had dumped Hairston for nothing, the Pirates maybe wait another day or two figuring Alderson will get desperate and take less. Long con.